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Climate Updates from The Royal Society (AKA The Alarmists’ Inventive Inventory of More Bad News)

The Royal Society has produced a new report to try to maintain the climate scare, providing an update on the last IPCC report (AR5) that came out in 2013. It’s in two parts, a document that summarises their main points in a non-technical way, starting off with “Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time” and a supporting document that includes references to new papers published since AR5. Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse then we thought”. The authors include several of the familiar “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration, such as Joanna Haigh, Ed Hawkins, Gabriele Hegerl and Brian Hoskins.

The report addresses 13 questions, some of which we have looked into, see below.

Climate Sensitivity (Paul)

The first question explored is How sensitive is global temperature to increasing greenhouse gases?

The summary claims that:

In 2013, the IPCC report stated that a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations would likely produce a long-term warming effect of 1.5 to 4.5°C; the lowest end of that range now seems less likely.

The article explains what climate sensitivity is, and discusses the different ways of trying to estimate it. It points out that there tends to be a difference between estimates that are based on observations, and estimates that are based on computer models (see if you can guess which method gives the higher values – observations or computer models).

This figure is included, which shows a comparison of observations with models assuming an ECS of 2.1C, 2.8C and 3.7C.

Notice that the observations curve lies below all three of these, suggesting that the climate sensitivity is below 2.1C. Yet the Royal Society document claims that lower values of ECS are less likely. So the report has included a diagram that shows the opposite of what is claimed. Maybe it’s a typo, and the statement should have read “the highest end of that range now seems less likely” (unfortunately not — the section ends with a statement that values below 2C now seem less plausible).

Several recent papers are included in the reference list that look at the question of climate sensitivity.

Gregory and Andrews (2016) – “toward the lower end of the likely range of 1.5–4.5 K for equilibrium climate sensitivity in the assessment of [the IPCC]”.

Kummer and Dessler (2014) – 3.0C

Lewis (2016) – best estimate 1.66C, range 0.7C – 3.2C.

Marvel et al (2016) 2.9C

Skeie et al (2014) – best estimate 1.8C, range 0.9C – 3.2C.

In conclusion, there seems to be nothing to support the claims in the RS report that lower values of ECS are now less likely.

Health impacts (Ben)

The twists and turns of lines on charts depicting climate variables has become less and less interesting. Scientists, activists and campaigning journalists have used every increment of any magnitude to claim that doom is upon us for longer than my entire life, and have dismissed each return to the norm as ‘natural variation’, rather than nature punishing academic hyperbole. The only question that remains is why have the proclamations of seemingly august scientific institutions not been their hostages to fortune? Few other public bodies are free to raise the stakes in political games without consequence; they would run out of money, goodwill or standing, and would be ushered away from public life.

The reasons for environmentalism’s endurance are too numerous and off-topic to go through here. What is interesting about the Royal Society’s prognosticating, however, is that it once again allows us to see the ideology of establishment environmentalism at work, smuggled in under cover of scientific prestige.

This is never more evident than in claims about the Nth-order ‘impacts’ of climate change, rather than in pure climate data and model output. That is to say that, between claims that the planet has warmed and what the consequences of that warming might be, so much uncertainty exists but is routinely ignored by the likes of the Royal Society, it brings into stark relief the political presuppositions they are the victims of.

For example, Question 13 of the RS’s new report asks, ‘How will aspects of human health be affected by climate change?’. The answer in summary is entirely bland: “Human health will be affected by climate change in multiple ways, with impacts including those from extreme heat, food availability, and changes in the geographical occurrence of infectious diseases.”

They should say “we don’t know”. Because they don’t know. Instead, they say,

This section considers some new research on a limited subset of these mechanisms: the impacts of changes in exposure to heat stress, increased infectious disease risk, and effects on nutrition. These are clearer now than before AR5. Other impacts, including potentially far-reaching effects mediated through social and economic disruption such as increasing poverty, conflict, and migration are not considered here.

The depth of what the RS does consider poses no risk of drowning in facts or data, much less new ‘science’. They are merely assertions, which offer few links to the literature they draw from, and even less debate.

And there is a debate. The big problem for the climate alarmists such as the authors of the report is that in no other era in human history has the rate of human progress been so rapid as the era of ‘unprecedented global warming’. We would not say that the well-evidenced precipitous decline of infant mortality or the reduced extent of infectious diseases or the increased lifespan of people throughout the world are the consequence of global warming. So why claim that the future climate is creating new, insurmountable risk?

The risk of infectious disease, and malnutrition are first-order effects of poverty. They are not first, second, or third effects of global warming. The Royal Society, however, say this:

Dengue accounts for about 390 million infections annually. The two main mosquito vector species are affected by multiple drivers including climate change. Several modelling studies since 2013 have confirmed that climate change would cause dengue to expand into areas at the edge of current distribution ranges. One study suggests that the population exposure to the main vector (as well as other diseases spread by mosquitoes) would increase by 8 – 12% due to climate change alone, amplifying the larger increase in exposure caused by population growth.

They used to say the same about malaria, which is carried by the mosquito also. Dengue is of course a nasty disease. Untreated, it will kill half of people in whom infection develops into hemorrhagic fever. But when treated, between 95 and 98% of people who develop dengue hemorrhagic fever survive. Fewer than 1% of people with infections die.

Those of us who remember when malaria was the climate alarmist’s favourite disease can remember the debate also hinged on the claim that climate change would push the mosquito and its own parasite into new territory. This, argued the evil deniers, misconceived the dynamics of the organism and society’s ability to respond. Malaria had once been common even with the Arctic circle. Thus, though it may well be the case that climate change could alter the range of the mosquito species that carry dengue (and other diseases), history gives us clear lessons in controlling them and the disease.

Moreover, estimating anthropogenic influence on the range of the mosquito is as absurd as the notion that climate change makes it a new problem or new risk. Dengue fever was a problem facing humans, no matter its range before or after any degree of climate change, which can increase spontaneously, just as climate change can be spontaneous, as can diseases and organisms that carry them develop past ecological niches that seemingly confine them. Is mitigating climate change for the sake of preventing 8-12% of dengue cases a more pressing concern than developing a vaccine or eradication programme that could abolish 390 million cases per year from the face of the planet?

The scientists at the Royal Society reveal that they have completely backwards priorities. This is ideology, pure and simple. Most people in the regions most affected by dengue would like motor and jet travel, and a vaccine. The priorities of the Royal Society, however, would seem to stand in their way.

The next entirely unsupported claim in the report is that

The complex influence of climate change on health via nutrition is illustrated by a modelling study which projected that by 2050, climate change will lead to per person reductions of about 3% in global food availability compared to a reference scenario, together with an important reduction in fruit and vegetable consumption. These declines are estimated to lead to a net increase of about 500,000 deaths annually.

Which modelling study? Which “reference scenario”? We are once again faced with the claims of scientists, who have made the same claims since 1972. Their models indicated then the same future. We should surely be dead by now. But since the 1960s, agricultural productivity and yield boomed, and prices plummeted. The problem for producers in developing economies has rarely been ‘environmental’ as much as economic. Whereas in the USA, marketable value can easily be added to food crops by mechanisation, this has been much harder for producers in poorer economies, who are further excluded from wealthier, mostly Western markets. The poorer producer is competing with the richer producer, his farm machinery, and the roads, schools, hospitals, factories and economic infrastructure and advanced markets he can access. Meanwhile, entire torrents of green activists are at work, encouraging… forcing, in fact… ‘sustainability’ on producers in developing economies, to ‘protect’ their ‘pastoral’ lifestyles.

If slight changes in climate can be compared to ‘reference scenarios’ to produce body counts, then the modes of production emphasised by green activists and their acquiescent scientists can too. Let us put our fingers in the air and estimate how many deaths we can credit them with. I would suggest that the greatest blame for distorting global political priorities away from the 9 million people who it is claimed currently die each year from hunger lies with the environmental movement. It is they who misconstrue the condition of those people as ‘environmental’ rather than economic or social.

It is ideological to presuppose in the ‘reference sample’ precisely what is claimed to have been found by comparing it with the output of the model not contaminated by climate change. It is ideological, pure and simple, because the agents in both samples – virtual producers – would have made different decisions had they been credited with the slightest common sense. Studies of the kind that the RS bases its own claims on conceive of producers as dumb agents, whereas in developed economies, farmers make decisions based on many factors, including markets, weather and climate, and their own interests. And it is ideological to claim that 500,000 deaths in the future are inevitable, to use them as puppets in some kind of grim morality play.

The same abuse of future statistical corpses continues in the Royal Society’s concern for people living on a very slightly warmer planet…

… recent work shows that, even with global warming of only 1.5°C and midrange population growth, over 350 million more people could be exposed to hazardous levels of heat by 2050 in cities such as Lagos and Shanghai. Another new study identified a threshold in air temperature and relative humidity beyond which increased deaths occur. Around 30% of the world’s population is currently exposed, for at least 20 days a year, to conditions exceeding this threshold. By 2100, this percentage is projected to increase to around 48% under an intermediate emission pathway (RCP 4.5) and around 74% under high emissions pathway (RCP8.5) (see Figure). Social adaptation could reduce exposure to these conditions, but would not affect their occurrence.

The last point is key here. ‘Social adaptation’ is climate-activist- scientist euphemism for ‘becoming wealthier’. Poor people in the West – in London, Paris, New York – died when it was hot, but housing and sanitation were not adequate. As economies developed, so did the standards of living. The heat of summer in New York is insufferable, but almost every apartment has been retrofitted with air- conditioning – units that fit into the old window frames of buildings that were erected before such a thing could have been imagined. In other parts of the same country, you can step out of your air- conditioned home into an air-conditioned car and drive to an air-conditioned workplace or shopping mall.

But such a future for the world’s poorest is as inconceivable to the Royal Society today as it was to the New Yorker architects of a century (or more) ago. This is ideology. It is to presuppose other people’s interests from the scientists limited imagination, and to forcefully argue to impose those limits. The means to protect people – especially the old, young and infirm – from heat are as well understood and within our means as the means to protect people from cold. These choices are only problematised by the distorted worldview that the likes of the Royal Society possess. Wealth is a problem for them because it is the answer to almost all problems, which leaves them redundant as an institution that long ago recognised it as such, but abandoned it in its own search for authority.

The promise of science is no longer prosperity, but the mere avoidance of catastrophe. With sufficient wealth, the problems emphasised (and in fact, mostly imagined) by the faux-scientists at the Royal Society become trivial at worst: a vaccination here, an air-conditioning unit there, investment in farm machinery, yonder. They are decisions that can be made by individuals, families, communities, and properly-constituted domestic (i.e. regional and national) public health agencies, but which are decisions that have been stolen by scientists who have very little to offer the world beyond the cheap disaster B-movie plots they elevate themselves with. Their bullshit science ‘detects’ problems in the future – a slight decrease in agricultural productivity here, a slight increase in the range of a disease vector there, and slightly more hot days – but rule out the agency of anyone experiencing those problems. This is ideology, through and through.

The ‘new’ science offered by the Royal Society has not overcome the ideological presuppositions of political environmentalism. Until the influence of that ideology has been recognised, understood, and excluded, no sense can be made of any study that claims to have measured the relationship between climate change and diseases, agricultural productivity and excess heat.

Decreasing Arctic sea ice – is there any influence on the weather in middle latitudes?

The impetus appears to be the rather concerning cooling trend observed in winters in Eurasia and North America.

Despite the long-term average increase in surface temperature at high-latitudes, there has been a wintertime cooling trend both in eastern North America and in central Eurasia over the last 25 years including a number of extremely cold winters (e.g. 2009/10 in northern Eurasia and 2014 in eastern North America).

You can’t have cooling at the same time as global GHG warming – unless the cooling is somehow due to the warming. Hence Jennifer Francis’ much publicised hypothesis about Arctic sea ice loss causing changes in the jet stream which in turn cause colder northern hemisphere winters. It was an attractive hypothesis, for obvious reasons, but it was also quite heavily criticised at the time.

There has been considerable use of computer models to investigate possible influences of Arctic warming on regional mid-latitude weather, and some theoretical, but conflicting, mechanisms have been proposed. If the weather systems stayed the same, enhanced Arctic warming would mean that the cold air blowing into middle latitudes from Arctic regions would be less cold. However, there is some evidence from models that regional decreases in sea ice, such as in the Barents-Kara Sea (north of Finland and western Russia), can interact with the regional weather systems to increase the likelihood of very cold winter weather in Central Asia, as has been more prevalent since 1990. The nature and strength of linkages between Arctic sea ice loss and mid latitude weather is a focus of considerable current research.

Computer modeling again. The attempt to make reality fit with global warming virtual reality. The problem is, attempts so far have not been too successful. The references provided by the RS themselves are hardly reassuring – roughly half actually contradict the hypothesis of sea-ice loss causing changes in mid-latitude weather patterns.

There are other theories as to why winters are getting colder, but these are not mentioned by the RS, presumably because they don’t fit the narrative ‘warming causes cooling’. For instance, RAPID (Southampton University) identified a very significant slowing in AMOC during the very cold winter of 2009/10, coincident also with a very negative winter NAO. The RAPID monitoring team also observed a general declining trend in AMOC from the early 21st century onwards. There is a wealth of research (e.g. here) connecting negative winter NAO (and cold European winters) with low solar activity, but the Royal Society ignores all of it in favour of trying to shoehorn puzzling observations into the dominant consensus theory of climate change.

Thus it appears that this section serves the sole purpose of highlighting ongoing research aimed at trying to explain a northern hemisphere winter cooling trend in terms of the observed decline in Arctic sea ice. Less a case then of “What have we learnt since the IPCC 5th Assessment Report?”, more a case of “How do we fit the inconvenient observation that winters have been cooling into our global warming theory?” Answer: You can’t very easily, but hey, don’t let that stop you going off on one.

“Instead of debating, highlighting and, where possible, resolving disagreement, many mainstream climate scientists work in a symbiotic relationship with environmental activists and the news media to stoke fear about allegedly catastrophic climate change, providing a scientific imprimatur for an aggressive policy response while declining to air private doubts and the systematic uncertainties.”

Which coincidentally ties in rather nicely with a comment I made just a while ago on another thread.

The alarmist addiction to bad news resonates with Bernie Lewin’s book on the series of scares starting with DDT building up to today’s global warming/climate change. In every case, the public alarm was promoted ahead of scientific evidence, to the point where the science didn’t matter to politicians having to quell anxious voters. A synopsis of the book, Searching for the catastrophe signal:

“Assuming that the net remaining unknown internal and external natural forcing over this period is near zero, the mismatch since 1979 between observations and CMIP-5 model values suggests that excessive sensitivity to enhanced radiative forcing in the models can be appreciable.”

If the net remaining unknown natural forcings are not zero, but positive over that period, the models are in even bigger trouble.

Ben: – (Health Impacts) – you’ve written an article which is far too long and detailed for me to comment on in depth. So instead I just want to pick you up on 1 point – your views on the (supposed) link between Malaria and the Arctic Circle – ‘Malaria had once been common even with the Arctic circle.’ Really? So you’re suggesting that a tropical organism – the Mosquito – is capable of surviving in the sub-zero temperatures of the Arctic? Its only when this, along with some of the other equally fantastic ‘events’ of the past which you claim to be true are exposed to a more sceptical analysis that I find myself – despite the graphs, tables of data and other pseudo-scientific ingredients which you have peppered your article with – starting to doubt some, in fact if I am honest, most of the rest of your claims. You have all the classic hallmarks of the true climatesceptic of course – the cherry picked single quotes from individual research papers and apparent ‘scientists’ are a dead giveaway – but somehow, when I delve beneath all these ‘facts’ and ‘data’ which you use to try to disprove the climate scientists’ (and in particular the Royal Society’s) peer reviewed research, all of these efforts, like the unlikely image of a tropical mosquito flying around the subzero temperatures of the Arctic tundra, seem to fizzle away into the ether…

“Although malaria is nowadays limited to tropical areas, most notoriously the regions of sub-Saharan Africa, many Anopheles species live in colder latitudes (see this map from the CDC). Indeed, malaria outbreaks have, in the past, occurred in colder climates, for example during the construction of the Rideau Canal in Canada during the 1820s.[12] Since then, the Plasmodium parasite (not the Anopheles mosquito) has been eliminated from first world countries.”

Indeed Jaime. Of possible interest is the fact that even in the nineteenth century Essex vicars lived in houses well away from the malarial coasts where their parishes were for fear of being infected – even before the link with mosquitoes was known.

Indeed again. Looking at the map I see one species extend up to the Russian arctic coast. The city of Archangel was a well known malarial hotspot. I had huge arguments with epidemiologists at UEA who prophesied climate change Anopheles doom.

Apologies – I’ve been working for a couple of days, and didn’t see the comment.

Jaime is right. But AGW trolls don’t like good news. History gives us a much better account of how to protect us from heat, cold, diseases, and hunger than mitigationists’ computer models — black boxes with about as much credibility by now as Mystic Meg’s crystal ball. And yet Jon demands “facts”!

The AGW perspective sees economic development as so many automatons blindly being driven by base instincts towards trinkets dangled in front of them by capitalist tycoons. They see only eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, shagging and consumer frenzies at Primark. But it is the AGW perspective which is base: it barely rises above its scatological preoccupation. It problematises every simple human bodily and social function, and builds itself into a bureaucracy to regulate the exchanges they seem to cause with a largely-imagined (or entirely misconceived) ‘biosphere’. It cannot see human life as anything more than this.

When your outlook only allows you to conceive of humanity as so many metabolic agents in a computer simulation, of course your view of history and the future is bleak. This dark, anti-human ideology is programmed into the computers that the likes of the RS claim produces ‘evidence’. It is, of course, harder to spot in temperature projections and other second-order estimates. The presuppositions of that ideology is there in those simulations, but are much more visible when those simulations are fed into simulations of social “impact”.

Jon is welcome, of course, to split hairs about 1 or two degrees latitude, or the frequency of malaria outbreaks. But the fact remains that such nit-picking does not address the point that people, with far less technology, have largely eradicated diseases from those latitudes and indeed from warmer climes, too. Much less can it confront my criticism that environmentalism is ideological, not “science-based”. Wealth, and human agency make a total nonsense of simulations. Which is why AGW trolls hate humanist, rather than eco-centric perspectives on history and the future. They are anti-human, through and through. Whereas wealth allows people to make decisions and take action in their own interests, for themselves, the environmentalist demands we ask permission from their “scientists” and their computers, first.

Not all environmentalists, of course. I remain sceptical about the extent to which eco-modernists have broken from their erstwhile coreligionists, and I have suggested they have not. But Mike Shellenberger’s brave move in fact takes a stand against many excesses of the green movement epitomised by governor Brown– including naked contempt for poorer people. It may be an odd thing for an anti-environmentalist to say, but I sincerely hope Shellenberger wins.

Shellenberger is one of the few ex-environmentalists who has gone to live with the poor in the developing world to see what their lives are really like. It’s a very different planet to be saved seen like that. All best wishes to his campaign.

“The report shows where new studies are starting to fill identified gaps in knowledge. In some cases, new work suggests changes in the probability of certain outcomes occurring, but in most cases the broad statements made by IPCC still appear valid”

The report covers 13 categories.

The full critique by ‘Scepticus’ takes issue with only three sections. That should be enough to call the claim that “the main message” being “it’s worse than we thought” into question.

But look at the criticism of those three sections.

The areas of dispute as outlined by Scepticus in the order he discusses them are:

“The first question explored is How sensitive is global temperature to increasing greenhouse gases?
The summary claims that:
In 2013, the IPCC report stated that a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations would likely produce a long-term warming effect of 1.5 to 4.5°C; the lowest end of that range now seems less likely.

Question 13 of the RS’s new report asks, ‘How will aspects of human health be affected by climate change?’.
The answer in summary is entirely bland: “Human health will be affected by climate change in multiple ways, with impacts including those from extreme heat, food availability, and changes in the geographical occurrence of infectious diseases.”

Question 5 Decreasing Arctic sea ice – is there any influence on the weather in middle latitudes?

The impetus appears to be the rather concerning cooling trend observed in winters in Eurasia and North America.
Despite the long-term average increase in surface temperature at high-latitudes, there has been a wintertime cooling trend both in eastern North America and in central Eurasia over the last 25 years including a number of extremely cold winters (e.g. 2009/10 in northern Eurasia and 2014 in eastern North America).”

So here is what the criticism of the RS report amounts to.

Question 1. Saying that the lower end of a range is probably less likely hardly qualifies as ‘the familiar “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration, such as Joanna Haigh, Ed Hawkins, Gabriele Hegerl and Brian Hoskins’, (so described by Scepticus who does not tell us who he is), saying ‘it’s worse than we thought.’

Question 13. The pronouncement on the section on Human health is “bland” not “it’s worse than we thought”.

Question 5 . The section on the weather effects of reducing arctic sea ice does not say anything is getting worse. It specifically states : “There is no particular basis for making significant changes to the IPCC projections for future amounts of sea ice.

The section is about recent understanding of the possible connection between the observed loss of arctic sea ice and observed winter weather in the northern hemisphere.

So no, the main message of the three selected sections, let alone the entire 13 section report is not as the Scepticus claims.

[PM: Nonsense. Saying that lower values of sensitivity are less likely is, obviously, saying things are worse than we thought. Section 2 about increasing methane is also, obviously, claiming it’s worse than we thought.]

Consider this: our AGW visitor showed us an argument he used to support his view of the dangers of climate change. In a series of follow up posts he was given a map, two historical instances of non-tropical malaria and information that such information is readily available. If nothing else it should set up some cognitive dissonance. In responding as we did we also informed each other (and this was apparently enjoyed from the plethora of likes!). But then what does our visitor next read? Will he come back – I very much doubt it. Only those with very thick skins (hi Len) thrive in this echo chamber.

Remember most sceptics originally were supporters of AGW. Many, from their own stories, were drawn to the sceptic side by the friendly nature of sceptic sites compared with those supporting AGW. We have a tradition to maintain.

Paul, thank you for those references about malaria in Finland. There I learned two factoids which interested me. I knew that malaria occurred in Archangel because my grandfather served there in 1919 and some other soldiers were infected. However I learn that malaria was still present in the 1930s. This is surprising because I also learned that even summer temperatures are not high enough for the malarial parasite to develop. Malaria only occurs when the mosquitos invade heated dwellings. Keeping mosquitoes out of buildings would have eradicated malaria, because there can have been no reservoir of the disease in the wildlife.

I am constantly amazed by the huge number of fascinating facts that I come across each and every day. It is true that for some of us who are especially blessed we never stop learning.

“In 2013, the IPCC report stated that a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations would likely produce a long-term warming effect of 1.5 to 4.5°C; the lowest end of that range now seems less likely.”

The ongoing published and peer reviewed estimates of both TCS and ECR that I have reproduced above indicate exactly the opposite, in fact, so here is the appropriate graph again, Mr. Philip Shenan:

A little use of the Internet to follow up the authors of the referenced papers should not beyond your capabilities…

Also as I observed above, it could be instructive to extrapolate the ECS and TCR trends out to 2025-2030.

You might also find this recent piece on recent estimates of climate change from Dr. Judith Curry informative:

As to the general credibility of the Royal Society, perhaps you could ponder the implications of this rather telling quote from BBC climate correspondent and renowned AGW aficionado Roger Harrabin:

The Royal Society is paying a price for the era in which lobbyists were doing their utmost to unpick climate policies. Some members of the establishment may have briefly forgotten that the public expects its authorities to be whiter than white.

I remember Lord May leaning over and assuring me: “I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over.”

Even a dedicated Warmist such as Harrabin was surprised by the level of hubris and absolute lack of appreciation of the scientific method revealed by that statement.

Your other points can be dismissed just as readily by reference to the appropriate scientific authorities.

I suggest you instruct yourself by reference to the most recent PEER REVIEWED publications on the relevant science before you resort to argumentum ad verecundiam from a source that long ago ceased to represent science and became instead no more than yet another organ of political policy.

CATWEAZLE.
Firstly, I am not, as you claim, resorting “ to argumentum ad verecundiam from a source that long ago ceased to represent science.” Nor do I agree that any question in science is ever finally “settled.” I am simply analysing what is written in the RS report and the criticism of that report presented here.

Now with regard to the substance of your response to my analysis of the ECS question.

It is a mistake to assume that you can “extrapolate” the graph of various ECS estimates and conclude that this means that estimates will be lower in 2025-2030 or any future date, even in principle. It is to be expected that later estimates will more accurately reflect the true value, as the review by Knutti et al (2017) which is referenced by Paul states:

“The consensus on the ‘likely’ range for climate sensitivity of 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C today is the same as given by Jule Charney in 1979, but now it is based on quantitative evidence from across the climate system and throughout climate history.”

That does not however does mean that future calculations based on more information will yield higher or lower values than previous studies.

Secondly, there are a limited number of studies in the graph you show. The ‘trend’ in that graph is illusory. Paul references two graphs from the Knutti review which give a more comprehensive overview:

The results are given for various methods of determination, and within each method values are shown chronologically. There is no general trend to a lower value over time.
I have read the paper by Lewis and Curry. Its estimate is another based on models and forings.

One method of checking on all these estimates is to do an actual calculation from the measured temperature and CO2 concentration change since Mauna Loa data began to be collected in 1958. That period of time is long enough to average out 60 year cycles like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. It does not average out the decline in solar irradiance over that period, or the increase in particulate pollution with rising industrialisation in India and China, nor does it allow time for the temperature to equilibrate, or ‘catch up’ for a given CO2 concentration, but all of those factors would mask some of the temperature increase due to increasing CO2 concentration. So the calculated value of the ECS will be, if anything, on the low side.

For the Gistemp surface data and MaunalLoa CO2 data shown below (along with the sunspot number value, a proxy fpr toatal solar irradiance with a 121 month smoothing to remove the 11 year solar cycle), the ECS is calculated to be 3 C.

You take objection to the overall impression that the article above unfairly mischaracterises the RS’s report as “it’s worse than we thought”.

The term is noteworthy today, as it coincides with the passing of the Independent’s Steve Connor, for whom it was something of a catchphrase.

The three of us whose identities are given in the articles, but which you seemed to miss, did not set about to argue that thesis. We spoke very briefly, and agreed to write a section each on what most interested us.

I’m not sure where you got the idea that the point of the article above was intended to explore that thesis. It seems routine, however, for passers by on a green trajectory to read what they have imagined to have been argued, rather than what is actually there.

I’ve never quite worked out what might be behind that tendency to read so obtusely. It might be the perspectives — ‘pro-climate’ and sceptic — are so at odds with each other.

Another explanation might be that, the longstanding movement to protect seemingly scientific claims from debate has resulted in an institutional culture which breeds antipathy towards debate and criticism. Certainly this is true of political environmentalism, which has no culture or tradition of debate to speak of. Hence its adherents bear more than a passing resemblance to the Taliban. We could be charitable and call it ‘professional deformation’.

“The consensus on the ‘likely’ range for climate sensitivity of 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C today is the same as given by Jule Charney in 1979, but now it is based on quantitative evidence from across the climate system and throughout climate history.”

A low value – less than say 2°C – for climate sensitivity indicates that we have little or nothing to fear from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a high value – in excess of say 3.5°C – likely indicates that we may have a serious problem.

So you consider that after the 35-odd years and billions of £/$/€ in research costs etc that have been spent attempting to pin down this figure the fact that we are no nearer than we were in 1979 is in no way a problem, and all we need is to continue to collect data for a few more decades and all will be well…

I find it remarkable that CATWEAZLE666 can read Philip Shehan’s commentary and neither a) present a logical argument against, nor b) accept his argument, but instead veer off in a non-sequitur, saying in effect: ‘the values haven’t changed since 1979 so research is pointless’. While avoiding the obvious– that CS= 3C presents the world with a serious problem — unless of course he is denying that, too.

“You take objection to the overall impression that the article above unfairly mischaracterises the RS’s report as “it’s worse than we thought”.”

It is more than “an impression”. Let me quote from the top of the article here, which is what I am commenting on. ( I am unaware of any other article where the names of the three contributors is given. I take it that ‘Benpile’ is a screen name.)

“Climate Updates from The Royal Society (AKA The Alarmists’ Inventive Inventory of More Bad News)
… Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse then we thought”. ”

I stand by comments on that matter.

As I wrote in reply to CATWEAZLE:

“I am simply analysing what is written in the RS report and the criticism of that report presented here.”

The thrust of your response, while interesting, is therefore irrelevant.

[PM: Continuing from earlier, Q6 says
“What do we know now? Observations show that many extremes have continued to become more frequent and intense” – more WTWT]

The graph in the RS report is from 1880 to 2014. The graph in your link begins in 1993 and ends for July 2017. Whether or not people can ‘see’ any acceleration depends on how ‘noisy’ the data is compared with the length of time of the data, and how the data is presented in terms of scaling of the vertical axis with respect to the horizontal axis. Here is a longer term view.

“Who funds the Royal Society? Is it no more than a Government outreach organisation funded by Lord Deben, the man who forgot the last syllable of his name?”

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 by the creme de la creme of British science, including Isaac Newton. They would hold regular meetings to present and discuss their research. That was the same year as the restoration of the monarchy, and it was awarded the imprimateur of “Royal” by Charles II. It is the world’s oldest independent scientific institution.

It began the publication of scientific research in regular journals in 1665 with accounts of the meetings proceedings. Philosophical Transactions, which established the important concepts of scientific priority and peer review, is now the oldest continuously-published science journal in the world. The society also publishes monographs, such Newton’s magnum opus, Principia Mathematica among other major milestones in science. A major portion of the societies funding comes from the publishing arm of the society.

Being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society is considered a major accolade in the career of a scientist. Pioneers and paragons in their fields are elected by their peers. Fellows are permitted to attach FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) after their name. That is a universally recognised signal to other scientists that the bearer is among the world’s top 1600 current scientists.

Those that level the charge of ‘political’ against the Royal Society are often the same individuals who dispute their conclusions with respect to the Climate (and the conclusions of the other 79 Science Academies in the developed world.) Is it too much to ask that these ‘skeptics’ offer up a consistent physics based explanation for the warming of the planet, and publish in a peer reviewed journal?

Qu.1 saying that new evidence makes it less likely that ECS is below 2C equates to ‘it’s worse than we thought’.
Qu. 5 saying that it’s likely that AR6 will include more on the link between sea-ice loss and cold winters in mid-latitudes equates to ‘it’s probably worse than we thought’.
Qu.13 saying how research has now better quantified the deleterious effects on human health equates to ‘it’s as bad as we suspected – officially confirmed’.

5 out of 13 sections fall into ‘it’s worse than we thought’. Almost all the other sections qualify for the categorisation: ‘it’s at least as bad as we thought and ongoing research may in fact prove that it’s worse than we thought’. There is no good news in this intentionally short-sighted update of current research.

— It is more than “an impression”. Let me quote from the top of the article here, which is what I am commenting on. ( I am unaware of any other article where the names of the three contributors is given. I take it that ‘Benpile’ is a screen name.)–

Comprehension is tricky for you, isn’t it. The three of the above mentioned authors are listed as contributors to the site on the right hand column.

“Comprehension is tricky for you, isn’t it. The three of the above mentioned authors are listed as contributors to the site on the right hand column.”

My sincere apologies, having carefully looked at this page I found, below the end of the comments section, which I confess I had not bothered to read beyond, the following among the names of listed contributors.

benpile
Septicus
Paul Matthews
Jaime Jessop

I take it that the ‘Paul’ in the main body of the text is Paul Matthews and ‘Jaime’ is Jaime Jessop.
I am less certain about Ben/benpile. Or is it BENPILE? Which, if any of these is your actual given or surname?

As for Scepticus, is that his first surname, because my comment on names here was this:

…‘the familiar “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration, such as Joanna Haigh, Ed Hawkins, Gabriele Hegerl and Brian Hoskins’, (so described by Scepticus who does not tell us who he is)…

I took it that Scepticus, who is listed at the top left as having ‘posted’ this contribution, was the author of the introductory part of this article, and was a different person to ‘Paul’, ‘Ben’ and ‘Jaime’. who authored the critiques of the three sections.

The point is that we can look up Joanna Haigh, Ed Hawkins, Gabriele Hegerl and Brian Hoskins, and make some assessment of their scientific standing and whether Scepticus’ characterisation of these people as ‘the familiar “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration is justifiable, or just another ad hom attack which is typical of “skeptic” appraisal of scientist’s work which does not fit their liking.

Warren Beeton has provided a couple of comments pointing out the tendency of “skeptics” to avoid discussing the actual science preferring to blow smoke by discussing irrelevancies or induclging in attacks on individuals or institutions.

I don’t know who Mr Beeton is, but I thoroughly agree with his remarks.

[PM: You really are an imbecile Philip.“Will the real Paul Matthews please stand and identify himself.”
It takes zero clicks, or three clicks, depending on which route you take, to find out who I am.
Clearly you are too stupid to do this, so I will spell it out for you.
Method 1: Hover your mouse over the little picture next to my name. Zero clicks.
Method 2: Click the “About” page. That tells you “about” the blog and the people who run it. The clue is in the word “about”. Click the link next to my name and then click “about” there.]

I repeat, I am only and can only comment on the criticisms of the three of the thirteen sections covered in this article, which begins:

Climate Updates from The Royal Society (AKA The Alarmists’ Inventive Inventory of More Bad News)…Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse then we thought”.

I cannot comment on criticisms I have not seen of two more sections you now say fit that description or any others not mentioned:

“5 out of 13 sections fall into ‘it’s worse than we thought’. Almost all the other sections qualify for the categorisation: ‘it’s at least as bad as we thought and ongoing research may in fact prove that it’s worse than we thought’.”

I still question whether simply saying that the lower end of a range is unlikely is really saying “it’s worse than we thought”, but even conceding that point for the sake of argument, one such section does not make that characterisation “the main message”

I stand by my earlier comments.

[PM: I stand by my earlier comments. You are an imbecile, Miss Shenan.]

BENPILE says: “The case was made that the RS’s work is political and it can be seen. Not even physics is a big enough fig leaf.
I make no claim about physics. I don’t need to – the RS’s politics stinks for itself.”
Warren says: ‘The case was made’. Where? When you claim its work is ‘political’, are you referring to the fact that it concludes the same as every other science academy in the industrialized world: ‘Man’s burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, and the effects are strongly negative (or similar)?

Mr Shehan, FYI, Jaime is a lady. At least, this is what I read into this paragraph earlier:

It’s almost as if there is particular shame and infamy attached to being female, a scientist, and not whole-heartedly embracing the man-made global warming catastrophe consensus. It’s half expected that some white middle aged males will, of course, because science denial for the benefit of Big Oil is part of that colonialist package, But a woman! OMG, the shame!

Philip Shehan tried to provide a photo of Jaime Jessup. I unapproved the comment. I’ll leave it with Jaime whether she wants to (re)approve it but I’d suggest we don’t encourage even the mildest form of doxxing here. Especially given the recent bizarre behaviour of consensus enforcers on Twitter regarding Jaime’s identity in particular. They do hate women who refuse to comply with their bullying, don’t they? Tom Fuller is onto something on that.

I might add that as a white middle aged male, I have not noticed any reluctance of ‘skeptics’ to hurl the most toxic personal abuse at me on blogs where that conduct is allowed.

I won’t go into my experience here as a whistle blower at the University of Sydney when I reported conduct on the part of women in the department which caused a colleague of mine to resign, and a surgeon who was undertaking study towards a PhD told me that as a result of the behaviour of the female head of the research group, if he did not take a year off he would be clinically depressed.

I found out at considerable personal, professional and financial cost, that women are assumed to be the victims of bullying, never the perpetrators.

Philip: ‘toxic personal abuse’ will be removed by moderators here. Your observations on female bullying are interesting but off topic for this thread. As to your critique of the main post, it doesn’t seem to amount to much. ‘Scepticus’ says

Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse then we thought”.

then three members of the Cliscep team criticise three of the sections. No claim is made that the three critiques fully substantiate the claim about the main message. That is the view of Scepticus and the three sections are consistent with it but do not seek to fully justify it. Jaime has now added a nice summary of why it is justified. But nowhere does it say “the rest of this post proves this sentence to be true.” The critiques are damning in their own right, however, not least the first:

The corruption of one of the world's most august scientific societies couldn't be clearer, due to Paul's meticulous analysis. https://t.co/VdFJFag9jz

Warren: –“The case was made’. Where? When you claim its work is ‘political’, are you referring to the fact that it concludes the same as every other science academy in the industrialized world”

It was made in the post above, by me. And I say that we don’t need “physics” as you call it, to observe the RS is political. (Though not even the RS claim that the mosquito or malaria can be understood with ‘physics’). I don’t need an alternative model of ‘physics’ to explain what I see as the RS shortsightedness, because the ‘physics’ are not in dispute. It is the tendency of climate warriors to hide political, economic, social claims (and prejudices) behind ‘science’, however.

I really don’t care what you claim ‘every science academy in the world’ claims. Most statements from such institutions are categorically political, rather than owed to research or analysis.To defer to them uncritically would be to eschew their founding principle: nullius in verba.

I did object to the personal attack on the authors of the RS report by Scepticus, who is shy about letting us know who he is. I consider that to be poor form. You made an issue of the identities of Paul, Ben and Jaime. I responded. If you don’t like my responses, don’t keep making an issue of it.

I would be delighted if you and others would confine further comments to or about me to my analysis of the the RS report and this critique of it.

I may buy into further attacks on individuals or institutions. I’m afraid I take attacks on colleagues seriously, as I outlined in my comment on the University of Sydney.

The Brave Knight, Philip, is here to defend the honour of the brave scientists.

If only he could make less of a hash of his ‘analysis of the RS report and this critque of it’.

I would love to know what that is.

I think I understand his mission, however…

Philip. No person has been ‘attacked’ by the above article. Much less have they been harmed. They enjoy immense privilege and influence. A trio of bloggers cannot, with their words, cause blood to flow down Carlton Terrace. It won’t even cause the authors to pause for a moment.

Back in Humpty-Dumpty land, though, of course, the word ‘attack’ takes on whatever meaning you want.

Meanwhile, I can think of 3 RS presidents who have overtly lied about individuals, deliberately and intending to do them harm, and to use the institutional power of the RS to close down democratic debate and influence policy.

I don’t take the good faith of *any* public institution at face value or for granted.

I will confine my response to stating that I do consider the description of the authors of the report as the “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration as an ad hom personal attack . It is not how scientific debates are conducted in the literature or at conferences, although I recognise that different practices are common on the blogosphere. It was a shock to me initially, but I got used to it, and if pressed, I can give as good as I get, but I do not enjoy such encounters.

And I do appreciate Mr Drake’s assurance that a tight rein is kept on the worst excesses here. This blog is indeed civil.

Now, do you have a specific point of my analysis you wish to take issue with? Please give scientific reasons.

I did object to the personal attack on the authors of the RS report by Scepticus, who is shy about letting us know who he is. I consider that to be poor form.

I agree with Ben that Scepticus didn’t remotely mount a “personal attack”. On the second part of the ‘poor form’ … Scepticus is simply the name this blog sometimes uses for posts when there are multiple authors. As I wasn’t involved I don’t know who wrote (and who possibly edited) the words at the beginning. My guess would be Paul Matthews. Paul tends to be quieter on weekends but will I’m sure confirm either way. There’s no enduring mystery here at all. The more you avoid the substance the more we are likely to infer that you haven’t arrived on Cliscep to deal with the great challenges of ensuring accurate reporting of Clisci from the UK’s preeminent scientific society (is that Scisoc?).

Philip, I’m struggling to see the point of you googling the 3 authors of this article, then wanting to post a photo of me here, while you obsess about minor niggles re. the ‘tone’ of the article but refuse to engage in the substance of the 3 arguments presented. I’m very limited by a defective keyboard at the moment, so can’t really fully engage on this thread.

P.S. The photo wasn’t me. It’s pretty easy to see who I am from my Twitter profile though, which you googled.

Warren,
Actually all that skeptics need to do, if climate was a scientific issue, us dicument the faikinfs if climate consensus predictions.
Can we start with, say, Polar bears?
Or are you proud if hiw Mann and gang took down that lady who obviously had it coming?
Or how about predictions of milder winters, now that all the rage is how winters are getting colder?
That irrational take downs of alleged skeptics by gangs of consensus authors are now peer reviewed and published shoukd give oause for reflection, if “climate” was a scientific issue.
The obvious post hoc arm waving to explain a few years of colder winters as *proof* should give pause to maybe question a few assumptions.
And when clear documentary evidence of data tampering by Australian BOM is produced, a scientific mind might ask a few questions h.
But no, as we see time and time again – Warren and Phillip demonstrste here- that “climate science” is all about the narrative, with only a sciencey veneer to dress it up.

I’ve only ever met one new troll. The rest all seem to be quite similar.

These two are cut from the same cloth as the rest. One is upset at the deeply offensive, derogatory terms, “usual suspects” and “alarmists”. The other wants us to explain disease vectors and political economy using “basic physics”.

We’re used to this… Having to dance around the faux outrage of absurdly narcissistic, low grade academics (at best) who have failed to develop (or have lost) any faculty of comprehension — arguments may only come through the appropriate channels — or any sense of proportion. The script doesn’t change.

Jaime made a wish “We need a better class of AGW troll on here!” and lo and behold she got her Christmas desire and we got two new candidates (one admittedly couldn’t spell his own name). So good were they that our usual incumbent was threatened by the nasty moderator with banishment to the bedroom. What a thoroughly exiting day. Can we have honey, all this talk of bears…

In considering the reputation of the Royal Society, we should not forget that they have within living memory elected as a Fellow Dr Paul Ehrlich. and appointed Professor Lewandowsky as a Research Fellow.

Mr Drake. I understand that people here do not consider that beginning a critique of a report by scientists describing the authors as “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration to be ad hom personal attack.
As I said, I come from a science background and that would be considered shocking in the scientific literature (but it would never be allowed to be published) or at a conference where scientists gather. The point there is to deal with the arguments.
But I have learned that different rules apply on the blogosphere.

Ms Jessop. Before commencing on my critique of this article, I made a passing remark about the poor form of an anonymous person ‘Septicus’ who I now understand is a compendium identity, making an ad hom attack on the authors of the named RS report authors.

benpile wanted to make a further issue of this, so i explained that ad hom attacks on authors, rather than simply dealing with the content of scientific articles are in themselves poor form (and an indication that the attacker lack the confidence that his or her substantive counter arguments are sufficient).

I further pointed out that at least the named sibjects of the ad hom remarks can be looked up, and the reader can make their own assessment assessment as to whether “the usual suspects” are indeed have a track record of alarmism and exageration, whereas no assessment can be made of the track record of the anonymous person making the ad hom to see whther he or she has a track record of resorting to ad hom attacks on people with whom he or she disagreees, because he or she is not a true skeptic, but has a fixed ideological position.

So I illustrated the point by demonstrating that the RS authors could easily found and their track record looked at. For completion i then explored the degree to which the other writings of authors of this article could be found.

I apologised for initially leaving you off the list, and further apologised for having confused your gender. That is what prompted my further inquiry as to your actual identity and why I asked if I had the right person, and supplied a picture from the photo files of Jaime Jessop from a google search, looking for a clearer photo to that which is attached to a blog under your name with a photo reproduced on Jaime Jessop’s twitter acccount.

It appears I had the wrong photo, but I really do not care one way or the other. It was just at the end (I had then hoped) of a discussion on real or assumed or anonymous identities of people commenting on blogs. Other than that, I really don’t give a toss as to who you are or what you look like. No offence.

Ms Jessop.
If by this remark;
“while you obsess about minor niggles re. the ‘tone’ of the article but refuse to engage in the substance of the 3 arguments presented.”
you are referring to your later post beginning
Qu.1 saying that new evidence makes it less likely that ECS is below 2C equates to ‘it’s worse than we thought’…
or your original comment, I did not ignore either. I considered your comments, and decided that I could not really add anything to my initial remarks as to why discussion of possible explanations of winter weather in on the east cost of North America and part of Siberia having been colder in recent years constituted “it’s getting worse.”
Qustionn 5 of the RS report is “Decreasing Arctic sea ice – is there any influence on the weather in middle latitudes?”
The fact that it has been colder there is not in dispute, and the actual RS paper notes of decreasing arctic ice cover
“There is no particular basis for making significant changes to the IPCC projections for future amounts of sea ice.”

I stand by my original comments.

And as I wrote, I made an initial remark about ad hom attacks before beginning my analysis of the RS report and this article. Others here seems obsessed by it. I am not.

Actually Philip, the only thing I give a toss about is that if you are going to engage here, you do so substantively. You’ll find that if you do then nobody will give a toss about your academic background or your opinion regarding professional scientific etiquette, which is not applicable on blogs (even fairly polite ones, like here at Cliscep) or, it would seem, in climate science academic circles. You’ll find that if you don’t (engage substantively), then you’ll be largely ignored. No offence.

Further to the subject of what I am or am not discussing, obsessing about, or ignoring. Mr Drake writes:

“The more you avoid the substance the more we are likely to infer that you haven’t arrived on Cliscep to deal with the great challenges of ensuring accurate reporting of Clisci from the UK’s preeminent scientific society (is that Scisoc?).”

I do not believe I have ignored the substantive scientific comments here at all. I arrived here directed by a comment on Andrew Bolt’s blog on Friday. I have followed up with a comment there today, which begins:

“The Royal Society Of Climate Alarmism & Their Inventive Inventory Of More Bad News

The Royal Society has produced a new report to try to maintain the climate scare, providing an update on the last IPCC report (AR5) that came out in 2013. Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse than we thought”.

Clearly I lack the speed reading ability and am intellectually slow in the mental exercise of considering the arguments in the RS report and the criticism of it and formulating a response, compared to robert and the 17 likers of his and Gavin’s comments. Assuming they actually read the arguments. It took me some time on a wet Saturday afternoon to go through the arguments on both links.

In brief, The Global Warming Policy Foundation piece is a regurgitation of the beginning of the full critique by ‘Scepticus’ on the Climate scepticism blog…”

Back on topic, it seems that the RS report is indulging in non-science (nonsense?) by confusing short term changes in winters with “climate”.
There are no trends in weather that have started this century that can meet the definition of “climate”.
Also, unless the RS report reconciles the faiked earlier doom hype of no more winters with the newest doom iteration of increasingly heavy winters, then if anything the critique offered here is mild.
Valiant defenders of the current version of the RS should consider the idea that science made the RS; not the other way around. It has been around a long time but science has been and will be around longer.

Jaime
I rather thought I had gone into a substantive comment on the issues here, having read and considered the RS report and this article.

I have commented on extraneous matters which others have raised, but at the risk of repeating myself for the third time:

“I would be delighted if you and others would confine further comments to or about me to my analysis of the the RS report and this critique of it.”

Regarding what Mr Drake referred to as my “off topic” comment regarding the bullying of yourself with regard to your gender, Mr Drake introduced this “of topic”. I responded with my own experience of bullying while at Usyd, indicating that I strongly disapprove of such conduct, whether directed at you or anyone else, but disputed whether it is worse for women.

My other reference to my scientific background deal with the fact that, as you note, different standards obtain in the blogosphere than in discussions among scientists in the forums that matter, the literature and conferences.

I have affirmed that I am pleased that Cliscep is as you say ‘fairly polite’.

You have been entirely civil, not just to me, but in your other comments. I hope you regard my comments to you as the same.

I am unaware of any statement in the scientific literature that there will be ‘no more winters’.

As my earlier comment on the history and functions Royal Society affirms, of course “science made the RS.” If science was not becoming an increasingly important aspect of western culture at the beginning of the period that became known as “the enlightenment”. it would not have been formed by scientists. Although at the time it was referred to as natural philosophy, and ‘science’ and ‘scientists’ did not exist by those names at that time. That is why the full title of founding member Isaac Newton’s magnum opus, published by the Society, is (in English) “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”.

To a large degree the RS contributed to the foundation of modern science, and what is now recognised as “the enlightenment” by promotion and dissemination of science, including the introduction of scientific journals, peer review and meetings of scientists to discuss their work, made modern science.

Hunter — Back on topic, it seems that the RS report is indulging in non-science (nonsense?) by confusing short term changes in winters with “climate”.—

You’re right. And I believe the RS’s error goes several stages beyond this, as I was trying to demonstrate in the article. Confusing seasonal stats with climate change is just the start.

It confuses all sorts of things for ‘climate’, including disease, hunger, and poverty — things which the ‘all other things being equal’ caveat does not make any more real, since other things in this sense cannot be held equal, and would not be held equal in the event of the thing. (“All other things being equal”, I will drown when the tide comes in. But they aren’t all equal, so I walk back as the sea approaches).

It’s a belief from the Dark Ages, of course, not the Enlightenment, that bad weather and climate and its consequences are punishments for sin, but that is what the RS advance, all the same.

They imagine the natural order, disturbed by The Fall, as surely as any medieval theocrat knew it. Any statistical deviation from it forewarns of plague and pestilence on mankind.

‘Balance’ and ‘deviation’ are myths to begin with, no matter how accurate the empirical measurements of them are. The RS retreat further from the age of reason, to issue scholastic edicts, rather than, per the enlightenment, open up the issues for debate. It shoves its critics of the orthodoxy from the academy, and from public life. It denounces them.

These are not trivial observations. It is no mere accident that the concept of papal Infallibility looks a lot like the argument that ‘all the world’s leading scientific academies’ cannot be wrong. That Institutional Science now looks like the medieval Church tells about the collapse of the Enlightenment. Power was not taken away from princes and Churches, merely to be given to scientific institutions. The Enlightenment made man — singular and plural — sovereign over himself. That’s a big problem for the RS’s ambition, now. Hence we see its departure from science, and its growing hostility towards ordinary people and democracy. And, of course, its willful abuse of simple climate stats.

When reviewing Phillip’s impressive CV, it is notable that he has apparently done nothing with climate.
One of the arguments twusted most frequently by the climate extremists is that of expertise.
The other is setting the terms of the issue so as to only have to acknowledge those with whom they agree.
Both the selective confusion of opinion and reframing the terms are on full display.
Yet another tactic displayed in this thread has been the officious pose, digging into personal info not relevant to tge duscussion and bragging about one’s accomplishments.
Then, after personal attacks runn8ng away cring ad hom against any writer who dares disagree with the above.
So Ben is right: it is rather dreary.

Philip, habibg yiur cv, and knowing more than a few academics, l can see where you come from a bit.
Yes, the UK Met only a few years ago predicted no more snow, after a few light winters.https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/18888-embarrassing-prediction
I do have a question:
If you are as busy as I am certain you are, why do you put so much time into the personal research on skeptics, and so little on skeptical ideas?
Your style has more in common with the way a fundamentalist relugious person responds to challenges to his faith than to a leading scientist exploring an issue.

Philip,
It is too bad that “having read your impressive CV” doesn’t result in my typing the same in comprehensible English.
My working situation limits my use of computers to a tiny phone keyboard that isn’t actually set on English, and tge comouter is struggling to guess which language a particular message may be in.

Ben,
Yes the sciencey stuff (as opposed to actual science) is getting to the point where I will not be surprised, merely disappointed and shocked when the “Magisterium if Science” starts getting invoked in an effirt to silence critics and skeptics. We are nearly at that point in this thread.

The RS report does not confuse weather with climate. Nor does it confuse the effects of climate change – you cite disease, hunger, and poverty – with climate change itself. As the summary of the section you analysed states:

“Human health will be affected by climate change in multiple ways, with impacts including
those from extreme heat, food availability, and changes in the geographical occurrence
of infectious diseases.”

It specifically says it excludes any effects of climate change on poverty, along with social
and economic disruption such as conflict, and migration are not considered in that section

It does not present any seasonal stats, let alone confuse them with climate. It discusses the results of papers on health factors based on climate projections. It states that these studies constitute new evidence [which] provides a basis for replacing qualitative statements with more quantitative
ones, and for targeting specific adaptation and mitigation strategies that can reduce the excess fatalities incurred.”

The replacement of qualitative with quantitative statements, giving actual numbers does not equate to saying “it’s worse than we thought”.

The second part of that sentence is not the only statement that acknowledges that steps can be taken to ‘walk back from the rising tide’ to use your analogy. The report also states that “social adaptation could reduce exposure to these conditions, but would not affect their occurrence.”

Your ruminations on climate change being a punishment for sin does not appear in any scientific document, including the RS report. A scientist who made such a statement at a conference would be laughed off the podium.

The RS does not retreat from the age of reason. As I wrote, the RS was instrumental in initiating it and the “enlightenment”. The report makes no statement on democracy or hostility toward ordinary people. These are your own ideological, not scientific views. The ‘sin’, to use your term, that the RS has committed is to dispute those who reject the science supporting AGW with evidence they do not like.

Philip you have a rather starry-eyed view of the founding and the early years of the RS. From its origin it was controversial and notably highly patriotic. Early controversies included whether lightning conductors should be pointed or blunt (and of being unpatriotic if you favoured Franklin’s American pointed version) and whether the Society copied much from a French academy) and therefore was not the first natural philosophy organization. We should skirt over Newton’s notorious misuse of the Society and arrive at its current notorious misuse of its own motto.

Hunter. I have not given my cv and am unaware that anyone here has described it as ‘impressive’. I merely gave a link to some of my publications as part of my argument demonstrating that if you know the actual names of people, you can get some idea of their expertise, and possibly prejudices.
Having demonstrated that with giving examples of other people mentioned here, I thought I had better forestall any complaint that wheras i was holding other people up to scrutiny, I was unwilling to do so with regard to myself. In any case is it is not particularly impressive, but a rather middling list of publications for a professional scientist, as is the rest of my cv.

A thing I am rather proud of does not appear on a cv. It s a question I asked of a visiting speaker at a seminar in my home town of Melbourne. He was already considered a ‘God’ in the field, and was later awarded the Nobel Prize winner (Richard Ernst). I had an idea during his talk, and asked a question. He looked at the slide a minute, turned back to me and said “I don’t know”. The basis of my question turned out to be the principle behind functional MRI, whereby parts of the brain that are active during certain mental processes, such as solving a mathematical problem, ‘light up’ the part of the brain being used for that task in the MRI scan. The technique was announced in the literature about a year after I asked the question. A major development in neuroscience. i confess to being pleased with that question.

Your own professional experience sounds very interesting and highly technical. You don’t have to be a professional scientist to follow a scientific argument, and many non-specialists are very good at it. My own field is not climate science, so I claim no expertise in that field, but being a scientist gives you experience and helps in analysing scientific data and argument.

I quoted Jaime’s strong words on the Susan Crockford thread, early yesterday, in correcting you that ‘Mr Jessop’ was, to the best of my knowledge, female. For me it is trolling to get Jaime’s gender wrong, then, on being corrected, putting up a false pic purporting to be her on this site – who does that? – then going into your history of being bullied by females, then your pettifoggery on the subject ever since. Weird trolling that, as well as functioning as deliberate distraction of very important content on the thread here, I took as a deliberate reminder of the very strange behaviour of Michael Tobis towards Jaime Jessop on Twitter three and a half months ago. And I took all of this trollery as a warning for us not to support despised women who have dared to disagree with climate consensus enforcement.

It could be I’m over-sensitive. But, as far as I’m concerned, you’re on probation, big time.

Alan. The thing about science is that it is a highly international enterprise. When the RS began there were so few scientists that they knew each other and corresponded regularly across Europe. National jealousies were not a large consideration, except perhaps over the argument as to whether Newton or the German Liebniz invented calculus. The fact is they both came up with it independently at about the same time. And the RS did not look down on Franklin. It published the account of his work on lightning, although whether he actually risked electrocution by conducting the actual experiment with the kite and the key during an electrical storm is a matter of some debate. A Russian scientist died attempting to repeat it.

The RS was not controversial. It was founded in the year of the restoration of the monarchy in1660. King Charles II awarded it the imprimatur of “Royal”,having spent over a decade in exile following the beheading of his father, it seems unlikely he would have encouraged anything controversial or socially disruptive.

The French academy of science was founded in 1666 by Loius XIV. Perhaps he did not want the English to to be seen to be ahead in these matters, but both institutions can lay claim to being among the earliest of such institutions.

And Newton was a real oddball in some of his views. I think he believed in the philosopher’s stone which could turn base metals into gold, and became involved in controversy concerning the royal mint when he was in charge.

Jaime. Earlier when you mentioned your love of dogs I thought to recommend the book “How dogs love us” by Gregory Burns (Lake Union Publishing). However I missed my chance. Philip Shehan, however, has now mentioned NMR which the book describes, which gives me the opportunity to mention it. As dog owners and lovers we know without doubt that our dogs do love us without qualification. The book suggests there is scientific evidence that dogs have empathy, and from that it is a short hop to love.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. What I cannot fathom is why it hasn’t got greater prominence. It destroyed any anthropomorphic hesitations I might have had regarding my relations I have with my own dogs.

All of which goes to show that the very best of us can make mistakes, and the Royal Society’s apparent abandonment of its motto nullius in verba has done it no favours with regard to its credibility, it is not only on this particular blog that its failings have been noticed.

As we say in Yorkshire, “believe half of what you see, and nowt of what you hear”.

Cat. David Viner might well preen to be identified as an FRS but when I knew him in CRU he was but a lowly research scientist. Perhaps you are confusing him with Fred Vine, also of UEA, who deservedly was an FRS for his work on plate tectonic theory. I have never known Fred make any statement about climate change in all the years I have known him.

Yes Mr Drake, You are being over sensitive. The confusion over Ms Jessop’s gender was an honest mistake. I thought Jaime was a male name, possibly of Spanish origin, and i sincerely apologised for my error. No offence was intended. A moderator at Nova took exception to my rendering Lord Monckton’s title incorrectly. I thought it was Benchley rather than Brenchley (and I had to revers those names on checking if i got it right this time). I know there is an old saying. It doesn’t matter what they say about you as long as they spell your name right. Again i sincerely apologised for my error.

I have explained to Ms Jessop above as to why I posted what i took to be her picture, and i apologised to her again as I did to you for my error, and again in my explanation to you for any concerns it may have raised, Honestly, i had not thought that it was a security issue, especially as she places her picture on her twitter post which was small in the reproduced copy i had seen. i was just wondering if I had the right Jaime Jessop and she looked like a pleasant person in the photo. As i said to her, she has been entirely civil to me and i hope she feels the same about my comments to her.

At the risk of violating my probation, your remark about me going “off topic” was a slightly sore point from the days when i commented on Nova. Moderators accused me of doing going “off topic” there, and pointing out that i was responding to comments of other people, so perhaps they should take it up with those original commentators. That only seemed to further irritate them.

I really do think I am polite and and like to stick to science, and if you look at the comments i have ignored from others about me which i have ignored, I think you will agree. But alas, Ms Nova banned me from her blog. The main reason she gave was that I was taking up too much time and space replying to
the many attacks attacks on me by her fans who actually boasted on the blog how they had driven others off, and i was next. I suggested to Ms Nova that perhaps she might consider policing abusive comments, as you do here, but that was a non starter as far as Ms Nova was concerned.

In my final appearance on WUWT, Mr Watts broke into a discussion I was having about some graphs which appeared in a thesis and an article in Science. I asked people to look at them carefully as they were not incompatible as Mr Watts had been claiming in two articles when calling for the withdrawal of the paper from Science, with an emphatic condemnation of PhD candidate, his supervisors, the university and its staff. I think the lady who emptied the waste paper baskets was spared criticism. Mr Watts apparently had enough of my defence of these people and institutions, and broke into the discussion to declare “Jeez Shehan, pull your head out of your posterior, …” As I wrote earlier, i much prefer polite discussion, but when pressed i can give as good as i get, and that was the limit of my tolerance of Mr Watts’ criticisms. I’m afraid that i responded in like manner, suggesting a few insertions Mr Watts might like to try, and in high dudgeon he declared that making such remarks I had violated the civil tone of his blog (seriously, i mean, he started it) and banned me from there. I rather think he and Ms Nova were just unhappy at my constant rebuttals of their own views. It certainly drew very abusive flack from their acolytes. I think some “skeptics” are not as open to debate as they like to claim.

So I would regret being banned from here if you are of similar mind, but i will deal with it.

[PM: “I really do think I am polite and and like to stick to science,”.
So far on this thread you have burbled on about your time in Sydney, the founding of the French Academy, the identity of Jaime Jessop and myself, your skin colour, your gender, your inability to type, your inability to spell your name, Charles II…
and yet you claim you like to stick to science!]

It does. The most egregious case of which is its skirting over the El Nino in declaring the nonexistence of the hiatus.

Nor does it confuse the effects of climate change – you cite disease, hunger, and poverty – with climate change itself.

It does. Or it would not mention them, as I discuss in the above post. They are irrelevant outside any highly deterministic understanding of society’s dependence on natural processes. They naturalise categorically social/economic phenomena, routinely, to their own *political* advantage.

The second part of that sentence is not the only statement that acknowledges that steps can be taken to ‘walk back from the rising tide’ to use your analogy. The report also states that “social adaptation could reduce exposure to these conditions, but would not affect their occurrence.”

At last, you say something interesting.

“Adaptation”, as I point out above, is vernacular….

The last point is key here. ‘Social adaptation’ is climate-activist- scientist euphemism for ‘becoming wealthier’. Poor people in the West – in London, Paris, New York – died when it was hot, but housing and sanitation were not adequate. As economies developed, so did the standards of living.

I said it was interesting. Perhaps not. You’re simply restating and restating your objections, as though they had not been dealt with or anticipated. With wealth, ‘adaptation’ is a meaningless concept. There is no need for the interventions of institutions (such as the RS, or at least populated or influenced by its own ranks): people are able to make decisions for themselves. That they are not is the assumption of the RS’s report and its implicit conclusion. Wealth and autonomy are anathema to the RS’s outlook – its ‘ideology’.

The fact that wealth is the biggest factor predicting vulnerability to weather, climate and disease is the massive hole in the green narrative. We have been assured that ‘climate change will be worse for the poor’, though it isn’t at all clear that mitigation (or ‘adaptation’) will do those poor any favours, whereas we know that wealth and cheap energy certainly will. The extent that we can say we can do more than one thing, is true only to the extent that the argument for development is NOT influenced by the climate agenda. We know that development is the key framing of the environmental lobby, and its global political apparatus. Climate change policy will be worse for the poor.

Compare, for instance, the scant $2.6bn global expenditure on malaria prevention in 2006 with the £4.9bn of subsidies to renewable energy companies in the UK alone that year. The world’s extant problems are not being addressed by the Royal Society, and their discussion amounts to prevarication at best. They have nowt to offer to make the world a better place — their putative role in society — but bargain for power, all the same. Your hagiography of the RS does little to dissuade anyone of their more recent corruption.

Your ruminations on climate change being a punishment for sin does not appear in any scientific document, including the RS report.

Of course they don’t. The fact of the contemporary reformulation of sin stands, all the same. It was a scientist – a fellow of the RS, no less — who wrote ‘The Revenge of Gaia’. And I am far from the first to note it, and it is not only climate sceptics who have noted that environmentalism — even establishment, “scientific” environmentalism — very much resembles religion. I have no need to question your scientific credentials. However, on matters of history, your grasp does seem weak…

The RS does not retreat from the age of reason. As I wrote, the RS was instrumental in initiating it and the “enlightenment”. The report makes no statement on democracy or hostility toward ordinary people. These are your own ideological, not scientific views. The ‘sin’, to use your term, that the RS has committed is to dispute those who reject the science supporting AGW with evidence they do not like.

You are confused. It doesn’t require the RS to say “we reject the Enlightenment” for us to observe that the RS has departed from it. We might note, for instance, its erstwhile president’s reformulation of its motto as “respect the facts”. Similarly, its argument is increasingly scholastic. Its hostility towards and inability to participate in debate is the clincher. It does not do science, it issues edicts. We could call them fatwas.

The RS does not ‘dispute those who reject the science…’. It denounces them. Or as Tom puts it in the post about the attack against Susan Crockford in Bioscience, it doesn’t communicate, it excommunicates. You don’t seem to understand that heresy and excommunication are the MO of the old Church. It was during the enlightenment, under the motto ‘on the word of no one’ that anybody could challenge authority.

I am perplexed by your comment that the Enlightenment was in part forged by the RS, and that this would somehow answer the claim that the RS are walking back from the Enlightenment. the Royal Society, even if it single-handedly constructed the Age of Reason does not own it, nor even represent it.

No doubt there were simultaneous movements, some of which were proto-scientific institutions that contributed to the changes of the era, but the dynamics of the Enlightenment are not principally the development of science. It wasn’t merely that ideas such as heliocentrism or the disocvery of fossils undermine the authority of the Bible; the Ancien Regimes and their apparatus were losing their authority for many reasons, not least the development of capitalism and industry mobilising new political forces in turn.

The RS, then, better stands as — perhaps — a product of that era, representing its politics. But the role of speaking truth to power turned into speaking official truth for official power. If the RS had embraced debate, and welcomed critics into its discussion, I would be wearing its T-shirts, marching in the street, and singing its praises from the rooftops. (Just as I did literally [apart from the singing], incidentally, in defence of people in your field on this side of the planet, when they faced continual harassment from animal rights terrorists). The RS has instead closed down and prevented debate, asserting the authority of institutional science over the ignorant hoi polloi. If you don’t understand that as an expression of contempt for democracy, you probably don’t know much about the Enlightenment, history, or politics. Which would make you an ideal FRS candidate, like Paul Ehrlich (FRS), whose naked misanthropy and historical ignorance is a matter of historical fact. The Age of Reason also produced some terrible ideas: Malthusianism, Eugenics, Positivism… All of which had a home at Carlton Terrace. It only becomes a problem when they are the ONLY ideas permitted. You don’t seem to understand that. Or perhaps you do, and you simply don’t care. So much for “science”.

There’s a sewer of confused and semi-literate comments from someone called Philip, who seems to have difficulty spelling his own name.
I will respond to some of them ‘in-line’. There are so many of them that it’s clearer doing it that way.

[Agreed. I also think some deletion is called for, back to the substance of the main post. – Richard]

Ben. Thank you so much for including the Bronowski clip. I haven’t seen it since it was first broadcast. It is in my view the most powerful piece of television ever broadcast – an elderly man wading into a pond, scooping up mud composed of the ashes of his people and relatives, talking about the inhumanity of man and science. I misremembered it slightly – I falsely recall him wading in deeper – but its outright power reamains bright and shining.

I agree totally, Alan. The series is on DVD, and was on my Christmas list a few years ago, though I’d not seen it before as it was broadcast before, erm, me. I’ve watched it many times since, and it doesn’t age – I think it becomes *more* relevant.

I like to compare Bronowski’s modesty and unimpeachable grasp of his subject, with more recent BBC films on science. Needless to say, it leaves the likes of Nurse and Cox looking pathetic.

Just to point out, I have no problem with being misgendered because of my name; happens all the time as people don’t realise that Jaime can be a male or female name. The picture was not me and I wouldn’t have posted it even if it was because it’s not relevant; Neither for that matter would posting pics of Ben or Paul on this thread be relevant. That’s all. Matter closed as far as I’m concerned.

Thanks for the book recommendation Alan. I’m fascinated with the story of human-canine co-evolution. It has much to tell us,I am sure. I also strongly suspect that we didn’t initiate the domestication of dogs – they approached us first – and I have a niggling suspicion that not just homo sapiens were involved in this story, but homo neanderthalensis too.

To continue on topic, it is interesting that the RS, and really nearky all orgs caught up in tge consensus, continue avoiding the plain fact that climate sensitivity has been and remains low, if one is willing to look at data as opposed to models.
It is the ability, however, to skip over the failed predictions and ignore pesky data and dound completely confident that *this time* is the correct one. And none of the past counts or even should be acknowledged…….

PM. Those “burblings” are in response to posts by others on matters arising. When I said I prefer to stick to science, what I meant was that I prefer to stick to the point of arguments raised rather than indulging in personal sledging. Scince is the main point here, specifically the RS report, but people have made comments on other matters, which is fine by me, as long as they are interesting.

I have explained above how I came to discuss Usyd. It was in response to Richard’s remarks about the bullying of Jaime. I sympathised with Ms Jessop on being informed of that. I thoroughly disapprove of such behaviour and gave that anecdote which demonstrates it, but does not demonstrate that women necessarily get the worst of it.

As regard to observations on the Royal Society. The first of my posts on that matter was in reply to this question from Man in a barrel:

“Who funds the Royal Society? Is it no more than a Government outreach organisation funded by Lord Deben, the man who forgot the last syllable of his name?”

The second was in response to an informed comment about the history of the RS, so was happy to engage that topic without any snark.

I might ad that I am pleased that Alan found one of my other anecdotes interesting. I was unaware that fMRI had been conducted on dogs.

“Jaime. Earlier when you mentioned your love of dogs I thought to recommend the book “How dogs love us” by Gregory Burns (Lake Union Publishing). However I missed my chance. Philip Shehan, however, has now mentioned NMR which the book describes, which gives me the opportunity to mention it. As dog owners and lovers we know without doubt that our dogs do love us without qualification. The book suggests there is scientific evidence that dogs have empathy, and from that it is a short hop to love.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. What I cannot fathom is why it hasn’t got greater prominence. It destroyed any anthropomorphic hesitations I might have had regarding my relations I have with my own dogs.”

I suppose this counts as another burbling, but if people will stop making personal remarks about me, I won’t feel it necessary to respond with a note of personal explanation. I have ignored a number from some people but I thought your remarks merited a response.

PS. And yes I did misspell my own name. I should have mentioned that in my explanation to Richard as to why my mistakes on names were not a calculated insult.

[PM: This isn’t true. It’s a lie. Lots of your burblings are irrelevant and off-topic. For example your incoherent whining about WUWT and Jo Nova and Andrew Bolt. (It’s quite comical that you whine about being accused of going off-topic at JN, while doing exactly that here!) Future off-topic burblings from you are liable to be snipped.]

“There’s a sewer of confused and semi-literate comments from someone called Philip, who seems to have difficulty spelling his own name.”

Mr Matthews. Why do you find it necessary to write in that manner? I confess to typos and sloppy edits, especially late at night . Sewer? Confused? Semi literate?

One of my thesis examiners commented on my “lucid and engaging writing style”. Now I know this bit of information is going to offend people, but while working as a scientist I undertook a graduate diploma in the history and philosophy of science. My lecturers praised my essays. I sent one to a a broadcaster on the national radio network of relevance to a discussion he had been having. he wrote back that he had tried to ring me at work to tell me how much he liked it. I was paid to write an oral history based on interviews with veterans of the 2/14 battalion of the Australian Imperial Force. They were very pleased with the result. I regularly have letters published in the newspaper. In short, there is a lot of evidence that i know how to construct a written argument. And I am pretty good at verbal argument too. I ended up representing myself in court twice as a result of my whistle blowing at Usyd. One win and a draw. The opposing paid counsel said to his mate after I made one legal point “How good was that?” The judge complimented me on my cross examination skills. Not bad for an amateur.

If you keep up the personal remarks I will keep up with the burblings. Or not should you wish to throw in the towel by banning me.

You don’t have to put this up, in whole or in part, but if I am banned it will be for the same reason Watts and Nova did. They just could not hack a professional scientists taking apart “skeptic” arguments.

[PM: I don’t find it necessary, Ms Shenan. But it is appropriate and accurate. “Sewer” because it’s a vast quantity of nonsense. “Confused” because you are too muddled and stupid to even figure out who we are. Were you drunk when you wrote some of this nonsense? Now you are indulging in off-topic burbling again, this time with pretentious self-puffery, which may for all we know be total fabrication.

Clearly you are trying to get yourself banned, so that you can then go on to another sceptic blog and whine pathetically about being banned. Well tough luck, you aren’t going to get your wish. Rather than ban you, we’re going to point out, laugh at and ridicule your stupidity, lies and pomposity. But in future, off-topic comments about how wonderful you claim to be are likely to be snipped.]

benpile.
“Philip – The RS report does not confuse weather with climate

It does. The most egregious case of which is its skirting over the El Nino in declaring the nonexistence of the hiatus.”

ENSO is a cycle, though not a regular one. Sometimes you will have two el nino or la nina events in succession The average interval between events is about 4 years. It is recognised as a climate forcing, but over the longer term the alternate warming and cooling events average out in their effect of the global temperature trend.

In fact “the pause” was based on cherry picking the extreme el nino event of 1998 at or near the beginning of trend defining “the pause”. Start at the top and you are bound to head down.

I pointed out the pause was just another a non-statistically significant variation in the longer term trend. I pointed out that it disappeared if you began the trend period in 1999 rather than 1998. I was told that it was “unfair” to begin the trend with a cooling la nina event. Then when starting with the 1998 el nino event at the beginning of the trend was balanced by the 2016 el nino event, making “the pause” disappear, I was told that the 2016 event (but not the 1998) extreme event should be ignored when calculating a trend.

The following graphs show the linear trend lines for RSS version 3.3 and UAH version 5.6 lower troposphere temperature data for the entire satellite period, from 1998 to 2013 (when of the claims of “a pause” were being made and covered the period up to the AR5 report), from 1999 to 2013, and from 1998 to present.

Note that RSS version 3.3 was the data set invariably chosen by skeptics when discussing ‘the pause”. It shows lower trend values than the UAH data or any of the surface data sets. In 2016, Carl Mears of RSS published a paper explaining why this was so. RSS version 3.3 was in error due to a failure to take into account satellite orbital decay. It has since been replaced by version 4.0, but I am using version 3.3 because that was the data set in use when these matters were under discussion.

The UAH data clearly demonstrates that “the pause” disappears in the trend from 1999 to 2013 and from 1998 to the present.

That is not apparent in the (now known to be incorrect) RSS plot, but here are the actual trend values and 2 sigma or 95% confidence limits (°C/decade) for the trend plots for the entire satellite period, from 1998 to 2013, 1999 to 2013 and 1998 to the present.

0.137 ±0.060
-0.053 ±0.248
0.035 ±0.244
0.063 ±0.170

The point is that for short term trend periods, the 95% confidence limits, which are used to establish statistical significance, are very large. In this case they are so large that the trend for the entire satellite period does not only overlap with the shorter term trends, which would be enough to declare the trends are not statistically different, but it is wholly contained in the confidence limits for the shorter term trends.

You can’t invent ad-hoc sicknotes for climate ‘science’, to explain away inconvenient data. The Met Office, the IPCC and many others wrote precisely that the pause was real, and El Nino is barely over, sufficient to understand its magnitude, much less the state of the climate in its wake.

The RS’s impatience – and yours – is exactly the reason the alarmist lobby has given so many hostages to fortune, as I explain in the article. We should all be drowning by now. According to Ehrich (FRS), England, right where I’m sitting, should not have existed for 20 years – it should be gone according to his calculations. Don’t tell *us* about cherry picking!

I realised I should probably explain my last point if it is to be fair.

Your comments are dripping with self-justification. This is the classic troll signature… The bruised ego, the expectation, the demand for justice… It is about as much fun to read as sandpaper. Nobody cares for your boasts. If you were thinking about the reader, you wouldn’t bang on about yourself so much.

Similarly, your comments show few signs of having understood the arguments put to you. Yes, you can vaguely see that someone says “X is Y….”, but you have a tendency to skip the explanation about why “X is Y”, to only superficially respond to the argument, thereby preventing conversation. This is a trait of many of a green bent, who don’t really understand the debates they are engaged in, though they are certain they know why the other side is wrong.

It is difficult to pull out the sense of your argument. Your comments are poorly structured, they do not develop an idea, nor are they even well-formatted. This is the signature of a RANT.

Your comments seem intended to overwhelm and dominate the discussion, not to participate in one. The point is not simply that you’re like some disagreeable and oafish bore at a dinner; it is perfectly legitimate of course, to disagree. However, your demand for satisfaction when your argument fails to impress speaks to something else. You seem to expect people to see it your way once you have explained it to your own satisfaction. It should be that you can walk away from your own failure, to reflect on it, or at least try a new line of argument. But instead you double down.

You’re not the first here on their holy mission to vanquish climate sceptics from the web with their sheer brilliance. But, like them, you mis-judge your talents with respect to your mission. Many of us in fact started out like you, but soon found the climate-perspective lacking. If this is a mystery to you, it is because you talk too much, and cannot listen/read. Unfortunately, this is the disposition of a fool.

It is obvious to all but wordy trolls that briefly and occasionally deviating from the blog topic in discussion – even to make personal remarks – is not a sin. Numerous long-winded semi-autobiographical meandering essays is.

Philip,
When I mentioned that I know a fair number of academics and medical researchers, that was a line tossed your way to help you reflect on what you are doing. Think of surgeons and egos. Consider the god complex that many physicians annoy mere mortals with.
When I mentioned that you are acting more like a religious fanatic defending creationism or the coming if the 12th Imam, that was an invitation.
Your arguments are non-topical and based on simply ignoring what the other side says.
As a physician do you not find it odd that one of the “evidences” offered about how terrible AGW will be is a warning about disease in areas where they were endemic and only eradicated due to disease control, not climate?
As a scientist are you really proud of how the RS (and so many others) has resolutely refused to have serious debates on climate issues and has instead suppressed discussion?
You seem to be trying to be banned from a site that to my knowledge has only banned a mentally ill poster famous for relentlessly touting a delusional version of physics that only he understands.
Heck, I went off on someone here not too long ago after misreading something. When it was brought to my attention I re-read and checked and apologized.
Science, like all human endeavors, is maculate, not immaculate.
For me that is a call to humbleness.
Think of how during the Republuc period of Rome a victorious general, during his triumohal parade, would have a slave stand behind him to remind the victorious hero thst he is merely human.

Philip – Nova and Watts were probably just very bored with you. A quick google shows similar conduct of yours in the comments.. yes. you were drummed out of your research job, by nasty bullying women and are suffering from PTSD. and no doubt using blog comments to get your anger out at the world.. go find somewhere else to whine.

Might I suggest a solution to the problem of PS? I understand the desire to keep the reputation of this site not to ban people, yet the situation is perhaps becoming intolerable. I suggest you open a new discussion thread into which you transfer all PS posts (+ those from others responding to them) and to which new posts can be added. In this way the site’s reputation is maintained, this particular discussion is decluttered and anyone wanting a tox (= opposite to a detox) can avail themselves. I believe this discussion thread would quickly wither and PS would move on to pastures new.

Might I also suggest an “unthreaded” facility (similar to that BH has) to allow communications that might otherwise cause discussions to veer away from the intended topic. And I know that I am a prime culprit. As an example, I broke into a discussion to recommend a book on dog mentality to Jaime, she thanked me and added material that intrigued me, but which I dare not respond. With an unthreaded facility I could indulge myself and perhaps interest others in the subject. If this facility worked as it used to at BH the facility would itself clog up and spawn new threads in the main part of the site.

Shub. You must have a stronger mental constitution than I do. I woke this morning to read one Australian post after another. I almost balked when I found an off topic, post of mine repeated in its entirety (I got the distinct impression of having been partially absorbed). But then I gave way and surrendered. I did not sign up to this site to be so mistreated. I was not Enlightened. The Sydney night gave some respite but I fear the oncoming dark.
Phillip [whatever] couldn’t be Brad could he¿ (australian question)0, taking a horrendous revenge for some perceived slight, picking of denier sites one by one. ( a sort of stress test).

Could it be? Could Philip be Alene Composta? If it is Brad, we could request him to set off the Philip nuke at a few consensus sites.

“My lecturers praised my essays. I sent one to a a broadcaster on the national radio network of relevance to a discussion he had been having. he wrote back that he had tried to ring me at work to tell me how much he liked it. ”

Talking of Dr Ehrlich (as some of us were) I was thrilled to discover the following entry in Wikipedia (today’s edition), referring to his book “The Population Bomb” foretelling world-wide famine within the decade.
“Ehrlich further states that he still endorses the main thesis of the book, and that its message is as apt now as it was in 1968.”
Few will disagree with that.

Alan, the Wiki article features a claim that the reason we didn’t all starve in the ’80s was because he warned us of the coming apocalypse. No doubt similar claims by Mann et al will be made in their dotage.